The Old English name Chilton means "child's town", that is the place of a younger prince or knight. It might be a small place now, but our history goes back at least 2,500 years and, though mainly agricultural we have had some illustrious moments. In Iron Age times there was an important settlement on the land now zoned for industry between Waldingfield road and the church. When archaeologists excavated in 1997 they uncovered the evidence, including the ruts made by carts going in and out of the central enclosure.
At the time of the Domesday Survey in 1086, the tenant-in-chief was Robert Malet, one of William the Conqueror's favourite henchmen. His father had been given the task of burying King Harold's body after the Battle of Hastings.
Chilton has for centuries been a parish without a core. It is what historians term a DMV - a Deserted Medieval Village, centred around the church. No one is quite sure why the original village disappeared. it may have suffered from the Great Plague or perhaps when the deer park of Chilton Hall was enclosed the houses were simply moved out of the way. A more likely explanation is general agricultural depression and the drift away to the growing towns. But right up until the 1960's a remaining cottage stood by the church.
We do know for certain that in the 16th Century the Hall, within its deer park and moat, was one of the most important houses in the county. In the early 17th Century the Lord of the Manor, Sir Robert Crane, was MP for Sudbury and High Sheriff of Suffolk. One of his daughters was the grandmother of our first Prime Minister, Robert Walpole. Robert Cranes's memorial , flanked by effigies of his two wives, is in Chilton Church.
Chilton Hall is currently the home of Lord and Lady Hart and their two children.
The men on Chilton War Memorial
Five of the seven men named on the memorial in St Mary’s Church went to Gallipoli in the disastrous 1915 campaign that cost half a million lives before it was abandoned. Winston Churchill’s plan - he was First Lord of the Admiralty - was to capture the peninsular giving access to Istanbul and a route to supply Britain’s Russian Allies. The Turks put up such a strong resistance that trench warfare developed and when winter set in the Allies were forced to withdraw. Among the dead were three Chilton men and another was in hospital.
Lieut. Colonel W Morriss Armes was commanding officer of the 5th Suffolks, a Territorial regiment raised in West Suffolk that had a strong pre-war company based at the Drill Hall in Sudbury. He was managing director of William Armes and Sons that manufactured mats and matting at Chilton Mills, a huge factory in Cornard Road that was then part of the parish of Chilton. He died in the Regiment’s first attack on 12 August 1915 while leading his men forward armed with a revolver.
His younger brother, Captain Raymond Armes, serving in a North Staffordshire Regiment, was evacuated with heat stroke and died in action the following year in what is now Iraq. The brothers lived at Chilton House, an imposing property in Newton Road that became the offices of the Melford District Council until it was demolished in the 1960s following local government reorganisation.
Private Herbert John Keeble and Private Samuel John Finch were killed fighting with the 5th Suffolks nine days after their commanding officer. Private Stanley Percy Nunn survived only to die in the last year of the war fighting with the Regiment in Israel. He was 24.
Corporal Alfred Day of the 12th Suffolks was killed, aged 26, in France in the Spring of 1918.
Rev. Dermod Ross Milner, the last named on the memorial, was the son of Rev. John Milner who was Rector of Chilton for 49 years. He was a chaplain in the Royal Navy when he was killed in an accident at Archangel serving with a British-led force sent to northern Russian to support the White Russians in their struggle against the Bolsheviks.
The full stories of his death and those of the Armes brothers and Private Sidney Nunn, are told in No Glorious Dead: The impact of war on Sudbury - a Suffolk Market Town, published by Sudbury Museum Trust. It tells how Sudbury and its neighbourhood fought in the two World Wars on the battlegrounds and on the home front. The foreword is by Ronald Blythe, author of Akenfield, who grew up in Chilton. The authors are local historian Valerie Herbert, who lived at Chilton at one time, and family historian Shirley Smith. Printed in A4 format it has 240 illustrations and sells at £14.95. Stockists include Kestrel Bookshop, Sudbury; Sudbury Tourist Information Office (which will also post to UK addresses); Sudbury Waitrose; Landers bookshop, Long Melford; and Lavenham Post Office. International sales from Beckham Books - beckhambooks.com